Sri Lanka Mystery: Some Say the Statue Of Mary Is Moving

By By SETH MYDANS, Special to the New York Times

Published: August 16, 1987

MUTWAL, Sri Lanka—
Rohan Nishantha, a 16-year-old schoolboy, was the first to say he saw it in July, a slight sideways motion of the clasped hands of the statue of the Virgin Mary in a grotto outside St. James Church.

Benny Gomez, a 70-year-old retired merchant, said the next night he saw something, too: The left eye moved.

Aubrey Nichols, a textile company executive, said his parents saw some movement, and he has been returning every day in hopes of seeing it, too.

Hundreds of people gather each evening below the white-and-blue plaster statue, which looks down from its niche some 15 feet above them, to stare and pray in the presence of what some are calling a miracle.

Some of the visitors say the parish priest, the Rev. Rohan De Alwis, saw the movement on the first night, after being summoned by Rohan Nishantha.

Father De Alwis would not commit himself, but he said he had reported the phenomenon to his superiors and planned a scientific analysis when the crowds died down.

''I think it is some sort of sign to us that Our Lady is heeding to our prayers, that she is ready to help us at any moment,'' he said.

Many in the crowd said they believed the statue was bringing a message of peace to Sri Lanka in its moment of crisis, when the Government is attempting to heal a violent conflict among the mostly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the mostly Hindu Tamils.

Except during the hours of a Government curfew, the crowds continued to gather as Sri Lanka and India signed a peace accord and Tamil rebels began to lay down their arms in the north.

Christians, who number about two million in this nation of 16.5 million, have remained largely insulated from the struggle. Here on the island's west coast, in settlements just north of Colombo, they form a majority.

Standing below the statue here on a recent evening, Sheldon Randenya, who works at the airport, exclaimed: ''Can't you see, it's moving! Look at the eye, the black part, and the hands.''

But George Pushparaj, who works in a shipping company, was skeptical. ''Imagination can also make something happen,'' he said.